Advances in the precision spectroscopy of cold ytterbium atoms

Significant progress in the precision spectroscopy of cold atoms has been made in recent years. We report the latest results in our group on laser cooling and trapping of ytterbium atoms, quantum manipulation of cold ytterbium atoms in an optical lattice, precision measurement of the clock-transition spectrum, and laser stabilization to the clock transition and its frequency nstability measurement. The future prospects of optical atomic clocks are also reviewed.